


both threatening and beautiful

by goukyorin (sashimisusie)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:11:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashimisusie/pseuds/goukyorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra and Varric are an unlikely story, and the only ones who are surprised that the pages of their shared tale have already been penned are themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	both threatening and beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blanketspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketspace/gifts).



> It's lazy the way the text is scrawled – jaunted, haphazard, and smudged and left upon her desk. Yet it's there and it's the only boon she's going to get. A sneak preview of a work hardly even close to finished. Perhaps another romance novel, not one of 'his' better works certainly but far more felt than the others in past.
> 
> An unlikely pair does it start with, a woman leading with equal power and beauty abound with a slightly less than impressive individual at her side --unwillingly of course. She’s described as a hurricane, nought for the force of her gale – a blustering wind equated to the most miraculous of nature’s charms. 
> 
> A force indeed to be reckoned with, though the woman depicted holds softer eyes within an amber gleam and a sweet smile reserved only for those of most import. Soft touches and murmured quips are shared between the pair, hostility brokering more tension than there rightfully ought to be. The intention of the prose is not lost on a single soul, though only one is meant to read it. 
> 
> There’s a purposeful drag at the end of several pages, leading with a cliffhanger of romantic and somewhat tragic mishap – the line moving off to an even more scratched note reading: Figured you’d like a sneak preview of my next work. Let’s just say it’s been inspired by someone both equal parts threatening and beautiful. Happy Valentine’s day, Seeker. – V.

They are an unlikely story, the stern guardian and roguish storyteller that seem to converse entirely in barbed quips and thinly-veiled sarcasm. A Seeker walks into Kirkwall and interrogates a dwarf at knife-point, they wade through an endless sea of demons while keepign their lives intact, and save all of Thedas alongside the Herald of Andraste.

Just  _one_  of those things would be enough for a pulp fiction romance—the kind she refuses to admit to reading but adores anyway, impassioned breath bated as she turns the pages—but the entirety of their escapades combined would fill a three-part series. Cassandra and Varric are an unlikely story, and the only ones who are surprised that the pages of their shared tale have already been penned are themselves.

Then again, there are few things have truly remained the same since the Conclave.

She bends to breaking now, re-writing definitions that she once blindly accepted as fact. The world is not so simple that it can be divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’, shades of muted greys where there once had been stark black and white. The truths Cassandra sought slipped like lies through her fingers, fiction and fantasy becoming fact. Is it any wonder that it was a surprise? That a Seeker of Truth would fall short of having all the answers, or that she would come to appreciate his presence—his humour, biting as the winter wind down the back of her cuirass, or the whistle of a bolt sinking right where it’s needed.

Once, both seemed impossible. Now, she is not so certain.

Cassandra calls his name with an cry for aid when the bandit takes him by surprise, and if anyone notices the viciousness in her redoubled attacks, there is no mention of it. Varric screams hers when her shield falters and guard fails, crumpling from an attack that leaves her doubled over in her own blood. With potions raised to slack mouths and bitten-back pleas to the Maker, with verbal barbs that no longer sink in with as much force as before, bit by bit, the trenches dug to keep the other out fill and level.

He notes this, clever-eyed rogue that he is, one day in the Hinterlands when she backs down from one thing or another. Completely irreverent, and seemingly completely irrelevant.

“ Aw, Seeker. I’ve  _grown_  on you. ”

“ Like fungus, ” Cassandra says, a knife-sharp tug up of the corner of her lips. Her smiles are small, and secret, something to savour and tuck away like the simple holy symbol she knows he keeps with him under his tunic.

They are an unlikely, imperfect story but she would have no other—save, perhaps, the one left at her desk and waiting to be read by her eyes alone—at her fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt written by [tethrxs](http://tethrxs.tumblr.com/).


End file.
